The Truth About “Healthy Sugars” – Agave, Coconut Sugar, Stevia …

– The Average American consumes 150 lbs of sugar a year!!! Thats like eating a medium sized man a year in added sugar!

– Sugar has been found to be 7x more addicting than cocaine!

– Sugar eats away at collagen and makes you age prematurely

– Sugar feeds unhealthy bacteria in the gut and body

– Some of the most biodiverse regions on the planet have been cleared for sugarcane production. A dozen countries around the world devote 25 percent or more of all their agricultural land to the production of sugarcane.

Not to mention the scariest fact of all … it turns your children into tiny little monsters!!!

Sugar is definitely not the best thing to be consuming, especially in the levels that we do these days.

So how do you quit?!?!?

No Problem … Ive got your back, and all it really takes is 21 – Delicious days filled with amazing activities!

Yep thats right, quitting sugar can be a joy! And Im going to walk you through it and do it with you!!!

Step One: Be Able to recognize Sugar.

Sugar is sneaky and has the ability to hide behind a mask. But its kind of the opposite of a scary halloween mask … It is usually sounds like a nice fuzzy teddy bear that you want to cuddle.

Whats the best way to avoid it? If mother nature didn’t make it don’t eat it.

Now you might be thinking – well mother nature made sugar.

True.

But mother nature made it as part of something else. When we process sugar, when we essential get machines to partially digest food for us and turn it into something that it’s not, that is when sugar become bad for you.

When you don’t have the fiber, fat, and protein usually attached to sugar molecules, you digest the sugars really quickly. When this happens its like a strait shot of sugar to the kidneys or liver. Fast digesting sugars are the dangerous ones, they can’t do anything except be stored as fat.

You are supposed to get 6-8 g of added sugar per day, yet yogurts, ketchup, soda, “healthy” bars, salad dressings etc usually contain double or even triple that amount per serving.

Check out this Cliff bar food label below: Notice that the first ingredient is “brown rice syrup,” thats just another name for sugar. The 5th ingredient is raisins (dried fruit is incredibly high in sugar), the 6th ingredient is cane syrup, and the 11th ingredient is molasses. And even though this cliff bar looks like it is loaded with vitamins and minerals, sugar blocks vitamin receptors in the stomach and destroys vitamins and minerals … In fact if you look at the sugar content you see that it has 22 g of sugar. 4 g of sugar = 1 teaspoon. That means that this cliff bar has 5.5 teaspoons of sugar …

You can see that it’s very important to read the label. Things that are marked as healthy are loaded with sugar, and beyond anything else pulling sugar from your diet has the power to turn your health around.

Odwalla juice has more sugar in it than Coca-Cola, a bottle of BBQ sauce has roughly 56 teaspoons of sugar, a healthy bottle of Kombucha can even contain excessive amounts of sugar.

So what are we to do…

First, empower yourself and know where sugar is hiding.

Food labels are also written in order of what it contains the most of to what it contains the least of. If some form of sugar is within the first 5 ingredients, dump it. Especially dump it if it is the first ingredient!

But let’s break down some of the most common “healthy” sugars

Coconut Sugar – Coconut sugar is rumored to be low glycemic (doesn’t spike the blood sugar as much). Sugar is sugar no matter what but we can kind of hack the way we process it. Coconut sugar, when combined with enough fiber and fat, for example added to a plant based protein, can be low glycemic. But coconut sugar when put in juice or tea will give you a blood sugar spike. It’s all about balance. Is coconut sugar a healthy option? No not really, but if you want some sugar it is a slightly better option than table sugar.

Solution: Stevia is a much better sweetener. It looks like cilantro and grows just like an herb, and it wont spike your blood sugar. Just make sure that you get it 100% pure with nothing added. Large companies have stolen this substance and mixed it with a lot of additives. When shopping for this plant, look for the dried herb or make sure that it is 100% stevia with nothing added. Food marketing companies jump on these things as they know they can make a lot of money, and unfortunately, they usually have their bottom line in mind, not your health.

Agave – Agave has been rumored to be a healthy sugar, but agave might actually be worse for you than table sugar. The process of making agave breaks down fructan into fructose Fructose shoots directly to the liver and spikes the blood sugar quicker than white table sugar. There is a famous quote that when “Fructose reaches the liver it goes bananas”-unknown. Agave actually processes almost the exact same way has high fructose corn syrup (without the mercury though).

Solution: A much better option for agave is Raw Honey. Raw Honey contains enzymes and is naturally anti-microbial and anti-bacterial (it makes a fabulous face mask for acne). Honey actually kills some unhealthy bacteria in the gut and doesn’t feed yeast the same way that table sugar would. There is some evidence that Raw Honey is digested quicker and therefor spends a shorter amount of time in the small intestine, where we don’t want sugar to hang out. Sugar sicking around in the small intestine leads to Candida, an overgrowth of yeast in the small intestine. Candida can cause a host of problems including brain fog, fungal infections, low energy, acne, stress and anxiety. In traditional Chinese medicine redness around the base of the nose and acne on the forehead are a sign of candida.

So moral of the story? If you want to turn your health around, have glowing skin, have amazing energy, prolong your life, and balance your hormones, kick the sugar habit!

Stay tuned for the three-day sugar detox diet.

When considering sugar, use extreme moderation. Include it with healthy fats such as nuts and oils. Don’t combine it with quick carbs (pastries, pastas, cereals, flours, cookies etc). Read the labels, and reach for stevia or raw honey first.

Darling, your sweet enough already, you don’t need any sugar!

xo

Chels

For more information or support in getting over your sugar addiction, email Chelsea@collaborativehealthconsulting.com

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The information on this website is not intended to replace a one on one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. Chelsea encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional. The entire contents of this website are based upon the opinions of Chelsea Newman, unless otherwise noted. By entering your email address you are also requesting and agreeing to subscribe to my free newsletter / ezine. The information provided is for entertainment purposes only. You must be 18 or older to enter.